Sun, 13 Feb 2005
Evolution is history
This has been doing the rounds for a while now, but I figure it's
worth dragging up again just in case you missed it: Carl Woese's theory
that evolution (Darwinian evolution, that is) is just a passing
fad -- a side-effect of the formation of the first cells, about
three and a half to four gigayears ago.
Here
we have Freeman
Dyson discussing it, and pointing out that the Darwinian
interlude can loosely be considered to be coming to an end.
We humans are a substrate for memes; the
self-propagating unit of cultural evolution, intermediated and
transcribed from brain to brain by the human language faculty.
Memes don't obey strict Darwinism, because we can selectively acquire
advantageous memes -- in this respect, they follow a Lamarckian
evolutionary model. (Lamarckism has been pretty much debunked in
terms of applicability to the DNA/RNA world, but is a good match
for the acquisition of useful ideas.)
Despite this, prior to the evolution of language we, well, we
evolved via the straight Darwinian shtick. Survival of the viable
get from a random sprinkling of unhappy mutants. Rinse, cycle,
repeat across a million generations from pond scum to
pithecanthropus.
Now it looks like some folks are working on new replicator realms
(ProtoLife's proposed system doesn't use DNA or RNA) or
just building an organism with a minimal
genome.
Looking at it from a distance, if either of those ventures are
successful (and there are others out there, working on rather
different projects) we'll be able to point to them as marking yet
more phase-changes in the prevailing mode of evolution.
And I am left scratching my head and asking, how in hell
are the young-earth creationists and the "creation scientists"
going to handle that? (Other, of course, than by denying
that anything's happening at all -- "it's a fraud" is the last
defense of the over-exposed ideology.)
You've been trapped by last year's selfish memes. How are you going to
survive in the new ecosystem?
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posted at: 21:48 | path: /weird | permanent link to this entry
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